


Nothing Is Fine

by Ara_Vitus



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Manipulation, Mental Disorders, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:46:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2385572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ara_Vitus/pseuds/Ara_Vitus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim looks back on his initial encounters with the Operator, deciding to tell the story of how all of his troubles began.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Is Fine

I’m not sure why I never told you any of this. I suppose I just never had the time to sit down and explain exactly how all of this happened. Not that you would blame me like I do. Honestly, though, if I wasn’t here none of you would be gone. I guess he wasn’t always wrong. Killing me wouldn’t have stopped that thing from ruining your lives. If only I had stayed where my mother knew I belonged. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. Let me start by telling you I wasn’t always riddled with disorders and ailments. Not that I really had much time for being healthy and happy. The Operator didn’t think I needed to feel happiness for more than a few years. Not even our happiest days together actually brought pleasure to my life. This isn’t about how damn depressing my life is though. This is about how all of this was dragged on to you. This is more of an apology explanation than me telling you my tragic back-story. You heard enough about that from that hooded bastard. Let me hurry this up though. I can’t sit here forever and talk to you. People might get suspicious.

I wish I could give you more details, but even with that thing’s influence off of me I still have trouble remembering everything. If I am not completely positive about something I won’t include it. I wouldn’t want to be called a liar. I should probably start by telling you when I first encountered the Operator. It was a little after one of my earlier birthday parties, most likely between my sixth and eight birthdays. Like I said, I can’t remember exact details. One of my friends, or most likely their mother, bought me a camera since I was interested in film. A few of us went into the woods the weekend after my birthday to film whatever we saw run past us and pretend we were hunting monsters. I never thought I’d actually be hunting anything in my life, funny how the only time I pretended to I was the prey from then on.

 

While we were running around like idiots in the woods, because you know best that idiots go in the woods mostly alone with cameras, we saw something hiding behind the trees. While I wasn’t scared of the thing at the time, the other kids ran away screaming. I tried to catch up to them, but I tripped and dropped the camera. Fearing I would get lost alone, I left it and high-tailed it with the rest of my frightened friends. If I hadn’t gone back that night, maybe we would have been alright. I did go back for the camera later that night. I guess we aren’t that different, Merrick; we both explore dangerous areas alone at night with nothing but a flashlight.

 

I sneaked out of my bedroom window, like all rascal kids do at the ages between six and eight, and headed into the woods with my lame flashlight with almost no illuminating ability to find a black camera in the dark, shadowed canopy of Rosswood. I told you I grew up around there, didn’t I? I’m sure of that much. All of you know as well as I do that it is very hard to see in the woods at night with or without a flashlight. I did find the camera, though, when I was running from a creature that appeared from behind the trees. I wasn’t as much scared of how tall it was, seeing as I was short then and I’m short now, but his lacking facial features haunted me as a child. If I’m being honest with myself, they still haunt me to this day.

 

I would have gotten out, I’m sure of it, but I tripped over that damn camera. Instead of grabbing it and getting the hell out of the forest, I decided to document my discovery. What a brilliant idea that turned out to be. I turned the half dead camera on, surprised it actually still worked after being dropped and most likely stepped on, and turned to face the creature. Our meeting was odd, it was not one of menace or terror like you would expect from the Operator. No, when I first met it, the being spoke to me somehow. I’ll never understand why it stopped communicating with me when I met all of you in college, but when I first met the Operator there was no malice in its presence. However, looking back at the film I took of it, I could see I was merely being used as a sort of vessel. On the video the creature had those horrid tendrils stretching toward me. In some frames I swear I can see it smiling with a black void of a mouth split into its blank face. I could never freeze frame it to prove that, but I know that grin exists.

 

My first encounter with this monster was the moment my life became a curse. It took me a little over ten years to realise that. I wonder if it ever spoke to any of you. Possibly all of you at different times. Everyone tried to kill me at some point so I would not be very surprised if it manipulated you like it did to me. The beast tilted its blank face down toward me, almost hunching over to see such a young kid bravely holding a camera to capture its existence in some way. Not even for a moment did I suspect it would hurt me at that time. It reached a hand out to me, holding the flashlight I didn't realise I’d dropped back to me. I took it much too trustingly, and when our hand touched I felt a wave run through me that I can only describe as the essence of agony. When I first felt it, I assumed the creature was in pain and suffering. Funny how that pain I felt then was really all the pain I would end up causing you all.

 

With that wave of emotional and physical pressure, the Operator spoke to me. Or maybe what it really did was bring to surface all of my troubled thoughts. Why my father wasn’t around anymore? Why my mother barely looked at me? Why my friends talked behind my back sometimes. Why my life revolved around this never ceasing feeling of dread? These questions and the emotions they invoked shot through my body like a screeching siren, causing me to pass out. I don’t remember anything until I woke up to my mother shaking me awake in our backyard. I knew the creature must have brought me home somehow, and at that time I was grateful. That is until I started to have nightmares, headaches, and insomnia. You know, all the stuff that hooded bastard revealed when he left my medical records lying around. The Operator must have caused them. I never woke up screaming in pain and terror before I had that experience. Doctors don’t believe in ghost stories, so I was considered clinically unstable. With the random seizures I would suffer at school to the blackouts and fits of screaming I cycled through at home, it is no wonder my mother decided to bring me to a looney bin. I never thought she would just leave me there.

 

She tolerated me for two years at least, though I was taken out of school often due to disrupting the class with my nonsense. I didn't realise having a damn seizure was a nuisance to the rest of the class. My bad. One day I returned from school to see my bedroom disheveled and a suitcase waiting for me at the door. When my mother explained that I would be visiting a special hospital for a few days, I trusted her. What else would a child do? The place I was taken could have passed for an elementary school in the eyes of a confused child, then later in the eyes of a scarred adult, but I eventually found out I was being locked away in an insane asylum. It wasn’t an asylum but a mental hospital; it felt like a twisted prison when I look back on it. My mother visited me for the first week straight, one night even staying the night. That was the last time I saw her. She was weeping when she left but I can’t tell if it is because she had to leave or because I was a burden somehow. My understanding of her is twisted thanks to the Operator. I try to ignore most memories of my parents for that reason.

 

When she stopped visiting, I begged the doctors to let me call her. Every day they would tell me she had to go out of town for a relative of hers. One night as I glanced out of a small window I had I saw it. That demon was watching me from the courtyard that I wasn’t able to visit yet. Suddenly I was standing next to it, feeling a hand on top of my head. The feeling of betrayal rushed through me as words hissed around in my head. They were in my mother’s voice. The voice claimed to hate me for what I became, to hate how I ruined our family. I even remember my father for a brief moment, only the image of him shaking his head and the brightly lit cigarette hanging from his mouth. Again, I blacked out from the sensation, waking up the next morning in my bed. The doctors told me I was screaming and crying out some rather violent things. Let me tell you, strait jackets are not very fun. I don’t blame them for doing that to me. If I heard a child shouting all night that he would break all of his mother and father’s bones and stretch out their bodies on trees I’d be concerned too. I can’t say I remember ever thinking of them that way. I doubt the ideas were mine.

 

I stayed in that place for years, constantly hearing someone in my head telling me to kill someone else each day. I never reacted violently toward anyone, in fact one day I pleaded for them to lock me up in solitude. That was the only time I remember the voice attacking me verbally, though the screams brought on painful migraine and a rather bad seizure. I didn’t have too many of either of those. It only really happens when I disobey or fail to take my medication. Thanks again for that one, Brian, great way to end the day. I convinced one of the nurses to get me cigarettes when I was about 16 years old. I’d grown to befriend a few of the workers in the long time I had been orphaned to that place, so they rarely turned down my small amount of requests. I only wanted to try one because I knew my father for that trait. That was my last imagery of the man before he vanished from my memory. Whether he left us or died is of no concern to me, I really don’t give a damn about family.  
One day late at night I saw the creature again, only this time it appeared in my room. I watched as it looked around my room before picking up the matches I had and handing them to me. This time the feelings that rushed through me were of rage, something I was quite familiar with but not to this degree. It sent me images of the hospital burning to the ground and all of the inhabitants being engulfed by the flames. It was obvious it wanted me to kill these people who tried for years to help me cope with its existence in my life. Even at that age I refused, but my disobedience was met with violence. I can’t remember what exactly it did to me, but I swear I saw it form a twisted grimace on its face as it attacked me. The only other time I felt as terrified as I did then was when I heard the echoing of gunshots. Dread always gives off the same foul taste in any situation.

 

As you know well, the hospital burned down that night starting from my room. What I never told you was that I willingly lit the place on fire. I can confidently say that no one was injured. Just before lighting the first I set off an alarm they had hidden in all of our rooms. I fled the site when the fire was at its peak, having gotten a few burns myself as I wasn’t accustomed to lighting a damn building on fire. I watched from the woods to see if everyone was okay, but I blacked out too quickly to get a good look. I know they all got out alive. I can’t prove it or explain, but I am confident that I saved at least some lives during all of this. Unfortunately, my next store was with you on set. What happened in between was merely years of running and trying to survive off of the limited skills I had. Getting money for medication was my only real goal, and college was just a way to find housing. I never expected to make friends. I never expected to lose anyone else.  
That is how that creature came into your lives. Since the day I burned down my sanctuary I hadn’t seen that thing until we started filming in the park. I know none of you remember that well, and I only just recalled this memory, but the day we saw the Operator in the park during our recordings I passed out from a severe headache. The symptoms got worse from then on and I began reverting to the sickly puppet it wanted me to be. The rest you know, for the most part. Even I can’t piece it all together.

 

There, now you know the truth about me. I guess you can’t call me a liar anymore, Brian. I suppose you have a right to blame me for everything, Alex, I did ruin your terrible movie with my awful life. And Jay, I just wish I had something more than a camera to bury in memory of you. I had to setting for rather trivial items for all of you. My first camera for you, Jay, in memory of how I remember your last moments. A rock that looks pretty similar to the one you tried to kill me with, Alex, to remind me that both of us were just puppets in all of this. And the hoodie you gave me during the storm we met in, Brian, because you are going to need it much more than I will. 

 

Now that I finally buried something for you three I should get out of here. I need to talk to Jessica before I leave the area completely. I’d come visit, but what would be the point? I can’t let her know what happened to you. I can’t ruin her life like I did all of ours. If it wasn’t for her curiosity I would mark your grave with more than a few rocks. I can’t risk letting her know you died, even if she can probably handle it. I’d rather keep her happy and in the dark then have her suffer with the idea that she couldn’t save you guys. Trust me, it isn’t a very pleasant feeling. I need to go and talk to her, tell her that you moved away, Jay. I hope she doesn’t try to find you. I’ve already tried doing that before. It never turns out right. Even if we aren’t suffering, I can’t help but feel that life is over for all four of us. Your twisted self is wrong, Brian. Nothing is fine.

**Author's Note:**

> To clear a few things up, it is my opinion that the Operator and Slenderman were both entities within the series. On the camera would be the Operator, while the entity that seems to be less hostile and visible is Slenderman. That is all I wish to explain of this matter. This story takes place between entries 86 and 87 obviously. I didn't want to tag that because it would have ruined the ending. I do hope you all enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed reading it.


End file.
